Inaccuracies in fiction

[HoppyHat]

Do they bother you? I realise I am annoyed/disappointed by simple "mistakes" which surely a decent editor should notice?

A couple of examples

A very very popular novel. Set in modern day London. Character regularly gets the bus from A to B along a named road all of which exist in real life. But they don't use the correct bus number! Nothing bad happens on the bus, the driver isn't awful, nothing libellous. So why not use the correct bus number?

I've just finished a book which I really liked. The author is American. But part of the book is set in a posh English school in the 1950s. The headteacher calls the season following summer "Fall". And says (more than once) "you need to write your sister" (or similar) not write TO.

To me these things are so obvious and quite jarring. Anyone else?

The first Miss Marple in the recent modern anthology has a character referring to a mainline station. I know it is definitely anachronistic but I don't know what she ought to have said.

I suppose it's also a question of when did railways adopt 24 hr 'railway time'. Probably not until WW1 if then.

Well it was the 4.50 from Paddington in 1957.

I learned the 24 hour clock from reading the Chalet School. It wasn't in every day use in the UK when I was growing up.

The first Miss Marple in the recent modern anthology has a character referring to a mainline station. I know it is definitely anachronistic but I don't know what she ought to have said.

Probably would have referred to it by name. Anyone in a Miss Marple story would understand what was meant.

Why is mainline anachronistic? Mainline and branch line are absolutely of the time, I would have thought? It was certainly how we referred to them in my childhood in the fifties.
That was before Beeching messed everything up.

I found this image of a railway timetable from 1889 which appears to use the 12 hour clock:

I was utterly convinced it was wrong because it stuck out but now I've checked The British Newspaper Archive I see that I'm wrong. Interestingly, "main line" or "main-line" was generally used before the fifties until mainline became more commonplace. Anyway, as you were.

Coming back to this thread because, oddly enough, the book I'm reading has provided a clue about when Britain adopted the 24hr clock. This is from the first novel in the series Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford, published in 1924 but set in 1914:

I've just thought of another one.

I've rewatched 'The Ark', if you have not seen it then it is set on a space ship so yes I know I need to suspend disbelief but... A spaceship with hundreds of people on it think they are about to be hit by an asteroid, but then ONE PERSON realises it is actually a comet, she then has to explain to the more senior personnel that comets are made mainly of water so they can use it to solve their water shortage.

OK not everyone on a spaceship that is basically a life boat is going to be a career astronaut but you would think there would be some training

"half past 19" is an interesting usage.

Yes! And what does "it was two and twelve" mean?

I've been trying to work it out. The text implies this means 14:45 but I can't make any sense of that; 45 isn't divisible by 12.

Just wondering, could it be where the hour hand is pointing, approximately - 12 minutes past midday?

I think... it could be the chimes for the three quarters of an hour.

Embarrassingly, I'll admit I counted the bingbongbingbongs on my fingers to check this.

I think Valentine is calculating in her head that it is two plus twelve, so it must be 14 hours and 45 minutes.

That sounds more likely (could have been better expressed though!)

A book set in the present day. The main character wore Dr Martins. These were mentioned several times. At no point did anyone realise that the shoes with the bouncing soles are actually Dr Martens.

Oh yes of course - she's converting what she saw on her watch to this newfangled 24hr time in her head. Well spotted!

One of the advantages of being 75; I remember the confusion when the 24 hour clock became commonplace. 😂😂😂

Maybe they were the T*mu version

It depends. The travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor often got things wrong. He'd place buildings on the wrong side of a square, or describe castles as being in one town when they were in a town fifty miles down the road, etc. Doesn't bother me one bit. But that's because I read Fermor for the pleasure of his company and the beauty of his prose, not for his descriptions of Viennese architecture.

I guess it depends on why you like a particular writer. For example, some writers I cherish for their use of language. P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Anita Brookner, Anthony Burgess, etc, are all superb stylists, and that's why I love them. It wouldn't bother me if their work was full of inaccuracies, because that's not why I read them. Others I read because I just like them and their voice. Bertrand Russell is an example. His popular works have been heavily criticised, and some now consider him a misleading guide to philosophy. Again, it doesn't bother me because I read him more for his company. Or take great storytellers, like Austen, Dickens and Hardy. All have their faults, but they've survived for one reason above all – they tell a bloody good yarn. If Dickens says Dover is 20 miles closer to London than it actually is, I don't care. Same is true of all the great storytellers, from Tolstoy to the Brontes.

Then again, when it comes to historical fiction, I'm not so sure. If it were revealed that Hilary Mantel or Robert Graves or C J Sansom had got everything wrong, well, hmmm, yes I think it would put me off.

Ooh as a die hard DM wearer I would've noticed that (and grumbled about it!) instantly 🙄